(Reuters) -U.S. households that rely on services like check cashing and payday loans to make ends meet are more likely to hold cryptocurrencies, with all the risks that entails, than those who have more access to traditional banks, according to a government report released Tuesday.
The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation report also found that one in eight shoppers using buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services have made or received a late payment on at least one purchase missed.
The findings are contained in the latest periodic survey of banked and unbanked households: households with little or no access to traditional banking.
The FDIC surveyed 30,000 households in June 2023 as part of a series of surveys that began in the wake of the global financial crisis that began in 2007.
The share of households considered “unbanked,” or households that have not used checking or savings accounts, has fallen by about half since 2011 to 4.2%, or 5.6 million households, according to the survey.
But stark disparities remain across groups, with poorer Black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native and single-parent households, or those with working-age members who are disabled, significantly more likely to be unbanked.
Such households were also much more likely to be cash-strapped, meaning they had access to bank accounts but had also met their needs in the past 12 months by, among other things, borrowing from pawn shops and title lenders, or using the cashing checks.
Of all American households, 14.2%, or 19 million, had too little money. More than 6% of these had digital currencies, compared to 4.8% of households with full access to traditional banking.
Nearly one in ten underbanked households also used the increasingly popular BNPL services, compared to just 3% of households considered fully banked.
Nearly 13% of BNPL users reported missing or late payments, a figure that rose to more than 20% among the underbanked.
